The practical problem that we decided to focus on is “what factors are the cause for teenage girls to developed warped standards of beauty?” The specific cause for one beauty standard and one mental disorder linked to warped beauty standards is anorexia. The cause of anorexia is unknown because there are a wide variety of factors that may contribute to it but the common factors we know are that it can be caused by psychological, environmental, or social factors that affect teenage girls. We want to understand if social factors such as social media influence the way girls view themselves which can cause them to have anorexia because of the beauty standards that they view and the ads that are placed and catered to them on social media sites.
Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by an abnormally low body weight, intense fear of gaining weight and a distorted perception of body weight. People with anorexia place a high value on controlling their weight and shape, using extreme efforts that tend to significantly interfere with activities in their lives.The reason why we have narrowed down our project topic and have decided to put the focus on teenage girls is that there are many factors that surround teenage girls and their beauty standards that affect their health and well being. We have a special interest and focus on teenage girls because often times, in the media and throughout social media sites, teenage girls are not spoken about and the eating disorder is not one that enough light is shed on. We want to understand what the factors are that can occur in the life of teenage girls and how they can be so drastically affected to lead them to feel that the beauty standards of social media are the standards that they should adhere to. We honestly do not know why the standards of beauty are this way and we do not know why teenage girls believe that these are the standards that should be their guide to follow and live up to.
Our research study will help bridge the gap of what we know and what we do not know because no answer will be unanswered and no question will be unasked throughout the course of our research and throughout the course of our study. The research that we find will answer many questions but it will also delve deep into the questions that people are scared to ask surrounding the topic of eating disorders and teenage girls who the disorder targets the most in this world that we live in.
The consequence of not knowing what can affect teenage girls and cause them to become anorexic is that teenage girls will continue to be unhealthy and in the future more teenage girls will have eating disorders that can ultimately cause death at early adulthood or even far worse health problems because of the damage that has been done to their bodies. It is imperative that we do this research study for all teenage girls and we understand them a bit better because we could save many lives and also boost up self esteem because we can teach them that you don’t have to look a certain way that you see on the social media sites to feel or be beautiful. A sub question we would like to focus on associated with our research question that we have come up with is How often are teenage girls exposed to images or words that affect the way they view themselves and their beauty standards?
Works Cited
http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/anorexia/basics/definition/con-20033002
Booth, Colomb and Williams (2008) chapters 3 and 4
Creswell (2014) chapter 5
